Chapter 3 - ROSA’S BLUE BOWL
Vittorio wanted to leave immediately.
Elena refused.
“My brother is asleep by ten.”
“It’s nine twenty.”
“He’s been in the hospital twice this month.”
Vittorio stopped reaching for his coat.
The mention of Matteo changed something in his expression.
“What’s wrong with him?”
“That’s personal.”
He accepted the boundary.
“Tomorrow, then.”
Elena studied him.
Most powerful men she had met believed money turned boundaries into suggestions.
Vittorio did not argue again.
“Tomorrow,” she agreed.
At six the following evening, a black sedan stopped outside Elena’s apartment building.
She came downstairs carrying grocery bags.
Vittorio stepped out.
She looked at the car.
Then at him.
“You couldn’t bring something less noticeable?”
“This is the less noticeable one.”
“I don’t want to know what the noticeable one looks like.”
“You probably don’t.”
She handed him one grocery bag.
His eyebrows rose.
“If you’re coming inside, carry something.”
For the first time, Vittorio smiled without stopping himself.
Matteo Marchetti was twenty-four.
Thin from illness.
Sharp-eyed.
And considerably less impressed by Vittorio Bellandi than most people in Chicago.
He sat at the kitchen table wearing a faded sweatshirt, a hospital bracelet still around his wrist.
When Vittorio entered carrying groceries, Matteo looked at Elena.
“You hired him?”
“He’s my employer.”
Matteo looked again.
“That seems worse.”
“Matteo.”
“What?”
Vittorio set the bag down.
“I’ve been told worse.”
Matteo nodded.
“I believe that.”
Elena opened a cabinet.
There it was.
The blue bowl.
Cracked along one side.
The faded painted rim was chipped in several places.
Vittorio touched it with both hands.
His face changed instantly.
“I remember this.”
Elena glanced at Matteo.
“You do?”
Vittorio nodded.
“My mother kept oranges in it.”
“Nonna kept onions in it,” Matteo said.
Elena frowned.
“She kept everything in it.”
“That’s true.”
Vittorio turned the bowl over.
Three letters had been scratched into the base.
L.
R.
V.
Elena pointed.
“Rosa. Lucia.”
Vittorio’s thumb stopped over the last letter.
“Vittorio.”
No one spoke.
Matteo leaned forward.
“Wait.”
He stared at Vittorio.
Then stood.
“I’ve seen you before.”
Elena frowned.
“Of course you have. He’s on television.”
“No.”
Matteo disappeared into the hallway.
He returned carrying an old red recipe tin.
“Nonna’s.”
Elena had seen it a hundred times.
She had never looked through all of it.
Matteo opened the lid.
Recipe cards filled the inside.
Tomato sauce.
Bread soup.
Lemon biscuits.
Roasted peppers.
He removed a faded photograph from beneath them.
A boy sat at a restaurant table eating from the blue bowl.
Dark hair.
Serious eyes.
One hand hidden behind his back.
Vittorio took the picture.
“That’s me.”
“You’re maybe eight,” Elena said.
“Nine.”
“How do you know?”
“The shirt.”
His voice had gone quiet.
“My mother bought it for my ninth birthday.”
Behind young Vittorio stood Rosa.
Her hand rested on his shoulder.
On the back, Rosa had written:
Vittorio finished two plates and then claimed he hated it.
Lucia says he gets stubborn from his father.
Vittorio laughed.
The sound startled all three of them.
It was not the controlled almost-laugh Elena had seen before.
It came from somewhere older.
Somewhere he had forgotten existed.
Then it disappeared.
“I don’t remember your grandmother.”
Matteo sat again.
“Maybe you were too young.”
“I remember everyone from that house.”
Elena corrected him gently.
“This wasn’t that house.”
Vittorio looked at her.
“Exactly.”
He studied the photograph.
“My father told me my mother sold the restaurant when I was seven.”
“But this was taken when you were nine,” Elena said.
“Yes.”
Something was wrong.
Not with his memory.
With the story he had been given.
Matteo began sorting through the tin.
“Nonna used to get weird whenever Chicago came up.”
“How?” Vittorio asked.
“She’d stop cooking.”
Elena nodded.
“That’s true.”
For Rosa Marchetti, not cooking had been the equivalent of another person refusing to speak.
Matteo pulled out a folded child’s drawing.
Crayon.
Three stick figures.
One wore a white apron.
Another had wild brown hair.
A third was a little boy.
Above them:
MAMA.
ROSA.
ME.
At the bottom, in uneven letters:
OUR RESTORANT.
Vittorio stared at it.
Elena felt something tighten in her chest.
“You drew this.”
“I know.”
“How?”
“My mother must have brought me there.”
He closed his eyes.
Fragments were returning.
A kitchen bell.
Rosa slapping his hand away from hot bread.
His mother laughing near a window.
A blue bowl.
A wooden stool.
He whispered:
“I thought I dreamed it.”
Matteo searched deeper into the tin.
“There’s another thing.”
He pulled out a folded linen napkin.
Inside was a small brass key.
A paper tag was tied around it.
No address.
Only two words.
FOR VITTORIO.
The handwriting belonged to Rosa.
Vittorio took it.
“Do you know what it opens?”
Elena shook her head.
Matteo looked uncomfortable.
“What?”
Elena asked.
He rubbed the back of his neck.
“Nonna said something before she died.”
Elena went still.
“You never told me?”
“I thought it was one of those things sick people say when they’re tired.”
“What did she say?”
Matteo looked at Vittorio.
“She told me if a Bellandi ever came into our kitchen asking about Sunday pasta, I was supposed to give him the red tin.”
Vittorio’s eyes dropped to the key.
Matteo continued.
“And then she said something else.”
“What?”
Matteo swallowed.
“She said, ‘Tell him I came back for him.’”
Vittorio looked up.
His face had lost all color.
“She came back where?”
Matteo shook his head.
“I don’t know.”
Elena looked at the key.
Then the old photograph.
Then her brother.
Vittorio closed his hand around the brass key.
“My father told me Rosa Marchetti left Chicago without saying goodbye.”
May you like
Matteo’s answer came quietly.
“Then somebody lied to you.”
